A file cabinet stood on either side of the door. Tony said, “Start going through the file cabinets and see if you spot any familiar names.”
Since she had kept up with all those who’d gone missing over the years it would be easier for her to pick up on any familiar names. Though he doubted Blume would be careless enough to leave important files out in the open in file cabinets without locks. He figured the vault door was for those sorts of files.
While Joanna went through the drawers crammed with file folders, Tony went through the desks. The first, the wife’s desk, was well organized. The top was neatly arranged with only a photo of the two from what appeared to be an awards ceremony. The wife held a plaque. The print was too small for him to read. The blotter pad was a crisp expanse of unmarked white. The desk drawers were uncluttered. Pens, pads, pencils and other office supplies were carefully arranged.
The husband’s desk was completely opposite the wife’s. The blotter was barely visible beneath the stacks of notepads and printed articles. He skimmed the notepads. Lecture notes. He moved to the desk drawers. More notepads, pencils, pens and other supplies—not so neatly arranged. In the bottom drawer he discovered two files. Tony sat down in the man’s chair and opened the first of the two. The notes were recent. The files were not college students but those of patients at the forensic hospital for the violent, criminally insane still operating on the old asylum property. Apparently Blume had consulted on the two cases. So maybe this was the involvement his resource had meant.
Tony read over the notes related to a number of private sessions Blume conducted with the two inmates. Using his cell phone, he snapped a photo of the next of kin information for the two patients. Questioning the patients wouldn’t be easily accomplished but talking to family would be simple enough. He might not have bothered at all except the patients were a part of the pockets of activities Griffin had mentioned still taking place on the property.
“I may have something,” Joanna said.
Tony put the two files back into the drawer and joined her at the file cabinet on the right side of the vault door. She pointed to a heading on one of the folders. Test Subjects 1-10.
All the files that would have been behind that heading were missing.
“So he’s either taken the files someplace else or he’s destroyed them,” Joanna offered.
“We can’t be sure he’s the one. These files may be his wife’s. And they might not have anything to do with what we’re searching for.”
She looked at him. “Videos. We should search the whole house for videos.”
“You make a good partner, Jo,” he confessed.
She looked away, closed the file drawer. “Thanks.”
“You don’t mind if I call you Jo?”
She shook her head, met his gaze. “I guess, if we’re partners, I should call you Tony.”
He smiled. As tired as he was, it felt good to smile. “You should.”
They went through the office first. They checked each shelf, each book. No hidden files. No hidden videos. Room by room, the first floor, then the second, they moved through the house. Not one file or video was tucked away. The search stole more than an hour.
“What we do have,” Tony offered when she looked crestfallen, “are the names of family members for two patients Professor Blume was treating or consulting on at the forensic hospital still operating at the asylum. Maybe we can get some idea of the kind of work he’s doing from the families.”
Jo countered, “Or maybe the neighbor is right and the Blumes are over in Europe seeing the sights. Or maybe they took a detour and are in Barbados soaking up the sun.”
She looked ready to pull out her hair.
He cocked his head and pretended to ponder their dilemma. “As soon as I find my niece, I’m thinking I’m way overdue for a vacation. Barbados sounds perfect.”
“Just promise you’ll take me with you.”
Before he could tell her that he had already considered extending the invitation, she walked out of the house and down to the car. From the front door Tony watched her settle into the passenger seat. He hoped like hell for his niece’s sake—for Jo’s sake—that he had one more hero card left in him.
As they drove away from the Blume residence, she said, “Tell me about this Nick Shade you called. I know Gentry is a detective. You told me what happened to her.”
Tony wasn’t sure a week would be enough time to explain to her who Nick Shade was. He had single-handedly turned the Bureau on its ear. They’d watched him for years, primarily because of his connection to Dr. Randolph Weller—a serial killer and the man who raised Nick. Tony and Nick had become allies of sorts when the Storyteller returned to Montgomery for the one that got away—Bobbie Gentry.
“Nick is a whole different kind of animal.” Tony made the turn onto the highway. “He was raised by Dr. Randolph Weller, a renowned psychiatrist and a serial killer, one of the most heinous and prolific in recent history. He murdered more than forty people, including his own wife, and orchestrated the murders of numerous others. Nick was the one to discover his secret life and to turn him over to the cops.”
“Good for Nick, but that had to be tough for him to get past.”
“He had it rough for a while, that’s true. What he did was dedicate his life to finding monsters like Weller, particularly the ones no one else can find. He’s saved a lot of lives and brought countless serial killers to justice.”
“Do you think he can help us find Blume or whoever is orchestrating these abductions?”
“I believe he can help. He’s like a natural-born profiler. He can instinctively feel what the rest of us struggled for years to learn.” Tony had concluded that truth had been part of the problem with him and Nick in the beginning. Tony had felt threatened by him. He was human. He’d worked long and hard to reach a high point in his career and Nick came into it with nothing more than his instincts. He was one of the few people Tony counted as a friend.
“I hope he can help.”
Tony nodded. He was counting on Nick. Time was running out way too fast.
Merry Drive, 11:45 a.m.
Virginia Ruley was more than happy to talk. She invited Tony and Jo into her home and promptly proceeded to let it all out.
“My brother Eli was a sick man, there’s no denying that fact,” she said. “But what someone in that place did to him was just wrong.”
“Who is it you believe did these things?” Tony asked since she didn’t mention Blume by name.
She shrugged. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
Beside him, Jo sagged with defeat. They needed a connection to Blume, not another going-nowhere lead.
Tony asked, “Can you tell us what sort of things you mean?”
“Damn straight I can,” Ruley piped up. “It’s not like I can’t talk about it. The lawsuit was dismissed. Since I’m not getting nothing for what that place put him through, I might as well tell anyone who asks what they’re doing out there.”
Tony exchanged a look with Jo.
“They were bombarding Eli with videos. No one was supposed to know. The hospital claimed Eli signed, giving permission to do all this experimental stuff, but I don’t believe he would ever have imagined that it would be videos of people hurting each other. Murdering and maiming. It was sickening.”
“You saw these videos?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Eli told me about them. He said they worked him up something fierce but then they made him calmer. Said he didn’t have no desire no more to hurt nobody, just wanted to watch other people doing it. I was glad for him but I found it disgusting.”
“Did he say if it was men or women in the videos?” Jo asked, her voice hollow.
“Women. Young ones. He said it looked as real as anything he’d ever seen.”
“So you confronted his doctor about this?” Tony asked.
“Sure did. He said I must have misunderstood. But I knew Eli wouldn’t lie to me. Why would he make up such a thing? Didn’t make a lick of sense.”